drmstream[writing]

This pic­ture was taken at dusk in early May in my bed­room. I was 17 and fin­ish­ing up my final year of high school. My class­mate Eduardo was respon­si­ble for tak­ing the year­book pho­tographs; I was one of the hold-outs on his list. I was shy and dis­ori­ented. I still have the pho­to­graph that Eduardo […]

  It started when I butted in on a Twit­ter con­ver­sa­tion between @juanviejo and @susanchamplin, two peo­ple I enjoy­ing fol­low­ing.  They’d been dis­cussing com­mence­ment addresses made by David Fos­ter Wal­lace and Jonathan Franzen. I came in strong, shoot­ing for con­cise and emphatic with my two-Tweet attack. being utterly aware of human­ness doesn’t have to cause pain. […]

  That was a mean choice, giv­ing her the mir­ror, point­ing the cam­era past her fleshy arm. You aren’t being ambigu­ous.  You don’t like look­ing at her but you want to pho­to­graph her.  She’s a Gor­gon; her hair is filled with snakes and if we look her in the eyes we freeze to stone. You say […]

Sky and sea are opal grey. Mar­tin is stretched on the deck in the bow of the boat with an unopened book beside him. He has never been so happy in his life. The future is noth­ing to him, the past is noth­ing to him. All his life is effaced in the grey lan­guor of the […]

When  I walk along the street, the imagery is vital and imme­di­ate. A strong jaw. Her lips make deep creases when they purse. He’s got his shoul­ders thrown back like he’s been con­grat­u­lated about some­thing that he didn’t do. Her fore­head is pressed for­ward as if she’s look­ing into life through a plate glass win­dow. That […]

I want to assure you with all earnest­ness that no writ­ing is a waste of time — no cre­ative work where the feel­ings, the imag­i­na­tion, the intel­li­gence must work. With every sen­tence you write, you have learned some­thing. It has done you good. It has stretched your under­stand­ing. I know that. Even if I knew […]

Each place you go, don’t look for the thing that is dif­fer­ent. Look for the thing that is the same. That is your start­ing point, the anchor. I can share the expe­ri­ence. We aren’t alone. But we can’t find each other inside all the noise. We have to look out into the quiet, strip the […]

An old tree came down at the edge of the prop­erty in a wind­storm. It sat below the cot­tage at the edge of the farm road. The base was mas­sive and marred with water bumps, knocks and scars. Time had thinned out the top, mak­ing it appear fore­short­ened against the sky. The trunks and branches […]

Here’s how I work: I’ve got a long project under­way that takes focus and energy. To keep my mind lim­ber and my imag­i­na­tion at play, I explore dis­trac­tions in short bursts. I’ll write a story, mull an idea, research a set of images or some idle ques­tion. These are amuse­ments. All the while, I’ve got […]

The clues are every­where, but it isn’t until you see the title that the entire mean­ing becomes clear. I stum­bled across these paint­ings because I fol­low the artist on Twit­ter. Her han­dle is @julia_hensley. I don’t fol­low her because she’s an artist; a writer that I fol­low fol­lows her and I added her as I […]